Affirming Your Child’s Brilliance: Reclaiming IEPs as Tools of Dignity and Liberation

Navigating special education can sometimes feel like stepping into unfamiliar territory, with new terms, processes, and expectations. But you are not alone. As parents and caregivers, you carry deep knowledge of your child's joy, their brilliance, their struggles, and their story. This wisdom is powerful, and it belongs at the center of every conversation about their education.

At Sankofa Ed, we believe an IEP should be more than a compliance document. It should be a living plan that honors your child's culture, protects their intellectual dignity, and nurtures their growth in ways that are both culturally affirming and developmentally appropriate. Creating such a plan is a shared responsibility that requires families, educators, and communities to come together in partnership.

Here are three ways you can advocate for an IEP that reflects not just your child’s needs, but also their full humanity and potential:

1. Lift Up Strengths, Frame Needs With Care

When you advocate for your child, begin by lifting up their strengths, joys, and unique ways of being in the world. Your child’s creativity, humor, persistence, curiosity, and kindness are all assets to their learning, and these strengths can be intentionally built upon to support their growth, confidence, and success.

Leading with these strengths reminds the IEP team that your child is a whole person, not a list of challenges. You may consider saying something like this at the beginning of the meeting:

“Before we begin, I want to share what matters most to our family. We ask that in this meeting, everyone speaks about my child in ways that honor their humanity and dignity. Please describe their strengths, gifts, and potential as much as their needs. When talking about challenges, we ask that the language you use reflects compassion and respect so that the plan we co-create together shows my child as the whole, capable person they are.”

When you frame your child’s needs with care, you ensure the plan reflects their humanity and potential, not just their challenges. For example, instead of saying, “my child struggles with transitions,” you might share, “my child feels more successful when transitions are clear and consistent, and they benefit from extra guidance in those moments.” This shifts the narrative from what your child lacks to what they need in order to get their needs compassionately met.

By speaking in this way, you help create an IEP that reflects not only your child’s needs but also their brilliance and potential, ensuring that every support plan is grounded in respect and care.

Reflection Questions: 

• How can I invite the IEP team to see my child through the lens of their brilliance, not just their challenges?

• In what ways do my child’s gifts (creativity, humor, persistence, curiosity, kindness, etc,.) strengthen not only their own learning but also their classroom community?

• How can I name my child’s needs in a way that highlights what support allows them to thrive with dignity?
   

2. Ask for Goals That Match Developmental Readiness

An IEP should be created with your family as an equal partner. Parents and caregivers bring wisdom that no assessment or data point can capture in that you know your child’s personality, their interests, the things that bring them joy, and the supports that help them feel safe and confident. When this lived knowledge is centered in the process, the goals created are more meaningful and more effective.

Co-creation means moving away from a one-sided approach where goals are handed to you, and instead building them together with the team. This might look like:

• Describing how your child learns best at home and asking how that can be carried into the classroom.

• Naming your hopes for your child beyond academics, such as friendships, independence, or joyful participation in family and community life.

• Inviting the team to listen to your child’s own aspirations, so their voice is reflected in their plan.

When families are truly included in shaping IEP goals, the plan reflects not only school standards but also your child’s culture, values, and lived experiences. This kind of collaboration builds trust, strengthens relationships, and ensures everyone around the table is working toward the same vision of your child’s success.

Co-created goals are powerful because they invite shared responsibility where the school contributes professional expertise, while the family contributes lived expertise. Together, those perspectives weave a fuller picture of the child that reflects culture, values, identity, and strengths.

Reflections Questions: 

• How can we design goals that honor my child’s readiness and celebrate learning as a joyful, human process?

• What hopes do I carry for my child that extend beyond academics? For example, hopes rooted in friendship, independence, cultural traditions, and community belonging?

• How can my child’s own voice and aspirations guide this plan, so the goals reflect not only school expectations but also who they are becoming in our community?
   

3. Be Mindful of Data and Narratives

When you come to the IEP table, you’re often handed test scores, charts, and/or behavioral data that may attempt to define your child, but numbers alone can never tell the full story. Data always carries the perspective of the people who collect and interpret it, and too often it highlights only what is “missing” or “not yet mastered.” What gets overlooked are the things that matter most: your child’s resilience, creativity, and lived experience.

At Sankofa Ed, we call this work community-rooted data justice which is the practice of looking at the narratives inside the IEP and asking powerful questions:

• Whose story does this data reflect, and whose story does it erase?

• How can we reclaim the narrative so it honors my child’s resilience, cultural strengths, and lived experiences?

• How do we transform this data from a tool of measurement into a tool of liberation that points toward dignity, justice, and possibility for my child and all children?

When you advocate for your child, you are also opening doors for others. Every time you lift up strengths, challenge deficit narratives, and reclaim the IEP as a liberatory document, you are helping to reshape what is possible for all of our children. Advocacy is not just individual, it is collective. Together, we can transform special education into a space that honors brilliance, protects dignity, and builds liberatory futures for Black and Brown children everywhere.

Parent Affirmation: I protect my child from deficit narratives that do not honor their humanity.

With Love,
Christina